Art Heals: Lipstick

Social media and traditional news sources are full of advice about the adjustments we are all making as we work from home.  Keep to the same schedule you would if you were going to the office (ignoring the fact that your commute is now 2 minutes, 3 if you can’t find your slippers.)  Eat lunch with a plate or bowl and fork or spoon.  No, just snack when you feel hungry, there is no one watching.   Get fully dressed to put yourself, mentally, in work mode.  Dress only the top half (but don’t get up during Zoom meetings.) (Also, don’t eat during Zoom meetings.) Advice, advice.
So, I am not going to give you advice.  But I am going to tell you what I do.  Lipstick.
Every morning, after I get up, and have breakfast, and get dressed (both halves) and get a little news, my heart lurches as I approach my laptop.  Work.  I want to work.  I need to work.   But the work is so different from what I used to do.  So much less active. So little interaction, except the virtual.
 I think we all are searching for the relevance our jobs gave us.  For those lucky enough to still receive a paycheck, there is the stress of making sure that our bosses see us as essential, that the work we do virtually is vital enough to keep the job.  For those  who  no longer have the jobs they counted on, there is the stress of worry  about their families, and self-worth, as we, as most Americans, (erroneously, but it’s a fact) define ourselves by what we do, rather than by who we are as humans.
For creatives, there is the added stress of making things in isolation.  As I often quote Degas,

“Art is not what you see, but what you make others see.”  Not knowing if anyone will see or hear or read or touch your work is very hard.  Thus, we have the wonderful online concerts and virtual art shows and posted poetry. It helps, but as time wears on, it becomes increasingly difficult to keep it up.
So, for my part, as I translate my work as a curator into these letters, to showcase the amazing artwork that creatives produce, I rely on lipstick to get me started. Every morning, red lipstick. Don’t ask me why, I don’t understand it myself, but red lipstick gives me a sense of agency.  I face the world, or at least the reflection in my computer screen, and power through. 
Today’s artwork reflects this power a woman can feel.  This is graffiti bravely painted on a wall during the Arab Spring, in Cairo.  In the original image, the beautiful woman, dressed to the nines in her red dress and shoes, is fighting back against harassers with her spray paint, saying no to the oppressors.  I have taken the liberty of altering it a bit for our present crisis.  I see her, in her red dress and shoes and lipstick, fighting the virus with her spray can of disinfectant and her powerful spirit of getting through this.
Lipstick.  It is a small thing, but it’s mine.
And for me it’s working, at least for now.  Art Heals.